would you believe...

..if i told you i was crocheting?

well i am, so there.

terminally happy

continuing where i left off last time, i've been in a terribly, terribly good mood lately.

(i'm also aware that my updates have become increasingly infrequent. in my defense i can only say that it seems i've actually gone out and got myself a life. good news for my social life, bad news for writing pseudo-witty rants in the dark. also, my camera is a complete shitsack, which prevents me from snapping the artistically pleasing photos that form the foundation for this fine blog.)

i've been waking up to an odd feeling, one that makes me think things are somehow gonna be fine. that i have the potential to overcome anything life and bob decide to throw at me. that despite whatever may or may not happen, i'll eventually emerge as someone who's not entirely broken down in body and spirit.

fuck the illness. fuck work. fuck the financial crisis. fuck them all right in the ear. seems like nothing can penetrate this armour of maniacal contentment that's somehow hovering around me right now.

of course this could all be just a symptom of some deadly brain tumor ticked off by the MRI i had last week. MRI number 8, to be exact, in 34 months, also to be exact. what a profoundly useful way of spending both time and money. probably some kind of a world record, especially with the zero findings there's been so far. i'm probably infertile now too, because of all the radiation. oh well. at least i'm not claustrophobic. au contraire, i'm flaky enough to actually enjoy being there. what a strange person.

of course it could just be the spring. watching fresh green leaves pop out. feeling the gravel in my terminally worn-out summer shoes (which i refuse to retire because i got them in canada). wearing t-shirts outside, for god's sake. hope smells a lot like rain and earthworms.

but of course i know it all comes down to being at the right place at the right time, seeing and hearing the right things, being completely and overwhelmingly encompassed with something you can't explain but what makes you swoon and pant and giggle like a little girl anyway. or someone with a fatal aneurysm.

either way, i'm happy enough. anyone planning on raining on my parade right now.. well, i'd just like to see you fucking try.

spring, snooker & shallows

it's the time of year again when men put on their bow ties and shiny leather shoes and gather up to poke their polished balls into some deep velvety holes, bending over backwards to get the position just right, crafting every thrust with precision only attainable through years of practice. for characters like "the rocket" and "the captain" failing or running out of steam is not an option. they will pound through 35 rounds of sheer sweaty excitement to see who's boss and who's.. well, the bitch.

i'm just gonna end this retarded analogy now.

turns out watching snooker and knitting makes even the douchiest life infinitely more tolerable. that and getting some global-ass support from people who are under no obligation to even care. so i thank you all in the most non-clever and non-sarcastic way i know how.

and now back to some actual knitting.

i don't have much to say about this cowl though, except that it's utterly, utterly sweet and awesome. it drapes exactly as i wanted and i dare say the color suits me, sir. i wouldn't have said that a year ago, but as it happens i've recently matured and can now wear whatever the hell i want.

shallows by bonnie sennott

ravelry link

size 15 x 114 cm

madelinetosh tosh merino light (70g / 3.5mm)

and spring's here too, that belated bastard. i've always figured you can't really truly appreciate spring unless you've clawed your way through seven months of winter first. the first day you go out and the wind doesn't slaughter you like some cosmic chainsaw, when it actually caresses you instead of withering away your last remaining breath of hope, that's when you feel alive again.

and you skip along, humming as you go, squinting at the piercing rays of light and greeting every bird and bug and blob of color like you've just got out from the cave from the descent, and happily ignore the fact that approximately four months later some creepy bearded woodsman will yank you right back down again and throw you at the mercy of the drooling albino monsters your fellow men have become because of their chronic deprivation of sunlight, human compassion and dental hygiene.

pictured: me. yesterday morning.

but until then you're sort of, kind of, fine. and baby, it feels good.

hello, april

in the midst of all the horrors that ensue from such wretched circumstances as a) staying alive and maintaining some level of sanity during a crippling nerve illness, b) working despite said illness in conditions that bear zero resemblance to the oohs and aahs state of the initial OMG THEY HIRED ME honeymooning period, and c) ducking from gigantic murderous german-speaking birds, i have completely neglected this blog.

my child, my blood, my intellectual excrement.

i left her on her own, writhing helplessly without any loving nourishment, and ignored her existence while pursuing a selfish, opiate-laden path of my own called "it's me first or the bunny gets it" (also known as the "next fucker to irk me dies" path).

what a wonderful mother i would make.

i now realize the bird was merely trying to castrate me

but that's the thing with constant, unchanging pain. it's hard to concentrate on anything else when it's always there. it won't make you prettier. it won't make you a better person. and it certainly won't go away if you just think positive. no. all it does is turn you into a saggy bitter old maid with a slightly unfocused gaze and a medical bill the size of manitoba.

of course, once you reach that point, that's the moment you go out and buy as much yarn as you and the postman can collectively carry. in all colors, in all qualities, from all continents and price ranges. because that's what makes you (and by you i mean me) happy, and maintaining that level of happy is rather crucial here these days.

my precious precious happy

but after thoroughly sniffing the hanks, petting the hanks and daydreaming about the hanks, i slap myself (with the hanks) and figure things probably could be worse. i'm sure things can always be worse. and everyone has their own private hell. it's just that some people face suffering with a sort of defeated, stoic, graceful halo that inspires others to appreciate what they still have.

me, i'm more of the kind to kick, scream and throw steaming turds at any and all instances whom i at the given time deem responsible for my current misery.

which is hardly inspiring at all.

anyway. somewhere in the midst of all this i made a pair of socks. they're pretty,  and sparkly, and they made me and my feet happy.

seagrass by melissa morgan-oakes

ravelry link

ilun erikoinen (70g / 2.5mm)

incidentally, they're the first textured pair of socks i made with the toe-up 2-at-a-time method. i figured this twinkling beauty of a yarn deserves something more than just plain stockinette. and they fit like a dream too. perfect size, perfect shape.

now if only they'd deliver my damn wollmeises already.

winner & a rant

time to play god again and reveal the new owner of my birthday giveaway prize. to all of you gasping in horror how i can let go of such a beauty, i say, well... i'm guess i'm just cool like that. you might wanna start making friends with me right about now.

according to an all-knowing, all-singing and all-dancing random number generator, the lucky winner is...

papayamaya, with her comment number 6!

congrats sister! i've sent you a message with more info.

thanks to everyone for the good wishes. here's to another year of obsessive hoarding, failed (and occasionally successful) knitting projects and, most important of all, reporting about said activities in the form of long, incohesive, psychotic rants! chi-ching!

speaking of psychotic rants... i'm currently stuck in some kind of a knitting limbo. it's something that inevitably happens whenever i fail to program my knittings into a smooth schedule that glides effortlessly from one project to the next. such overlapping range of simultaneous knits is vital for my well-being because it ensures i always have something to do. if i get bored with one thing, i'll toss it aside and knit something else for a while. and when that one thing gets finished, there's another thing already waiting in line.

but such an ingenious plan is statistically doomed to fail every once in a while.

first i made cutesy. as soon as that was done i moved on to gyllis. at the same time i was making both bedford and twenty-ten. once gyllis was done i made wurm and two ruffle necklaces, and then went back to finish bedford. while bedford was blocking i picked up twenty-ten and got that done in a couple of days (photos to come at some point). but after that...

nothing.

there was no semi-finished project waiting, because, being a crazy person and thus unhealthily obsessed with my (supposedly) messy raglan increases, i had frogged my otherwise well-off still light a little earlier. so there was nothing to glide effortlessly to. i had no idea what to do with myself, so in terror i picked up a skein of heritage silk and began frantically knitting a sock, fully realizing it would be a mere comfort project until i managed to find a proper one, but not realizing what a mo**erf***ing pain in the poohole that yarn is. (feel free to disagree, but i'm never, ever, EVER making socks with that yarn again. slippery son of a bitch.) so the skein flew out the window and my fragile sanity went even fragilerer.

and now i can't seem to knit anything, because the knitting part of my brain is in complete lockdown state to keep all further unpleasantries away.

so i'm watching hour after hour of air crash investigation instead. normally i would knit something at the same time, which sort of softens down the horror, but now i just stare blankly at the broken-off tail fins, flaming fuselages and weeping mothers, whose kids weren't even supposed to be on that flight.

bob, please come back.